A love beyond death (Uncut)

People meet most ev'ry day.
Sometimes, they stop, but most go stray.
Some fall in love, some in despair.
Fragile, lost, life is not fair.

Celeste closed the book she had been reading from and looked up into her mostly female audience, before stating, "And that's it for tonight. Thank you for listening."
She bowed to the front ever so slightly while moans of disappointment and calls for her to stay came from the audience, but she didn't even listen.

She packed her things and left the small stage in the well visited bookstore, making her way to the exit silently, plainly ignoring the many questions directed at her.

After getting out of the door, she hurried around the corner, leaned against a brick wall, looked up to the stars above, tears in her eyes as she muttered, "It's just not the same...", while she heard her audience leaving the bookstore themselves, splitting into all directions while chatting, but none seemed to take notice of her standing there in the shadows.

When all had gone silent again, she wiped away the tears from her eyes and made her way over towards the sun tower, which brought light to the town even in the dead of the night. A soft breeze running through her hair, when suddenly a voice asked her, "You've recently suffered a great loss, have you not?"

The woman startled and hurled around to a man in a white robe, who had seemingly appeared from nowhere, dropping the book she had been clutching tightly.
She flushed red at her surprise reaction and knelt down to pick it back up, when a gust of wind blew strands of her long black hair into her eyes, causing her to close them.
When she opened them again, the man in the robe was gone.

She picked up the book again and rushed back home, wondering if she was going crazy now.

The stranger in the white robe didn't leave her mind and whenever she sat down to write, he would appear before her mental eye.
She pushed the beat-up typewriter away from her, letting out a long sigh.

After staring at her unfinished page for endless minutes, a smile crept on her face.

She removed the paper from the machine and put a blank page into it, pulling it back to the front and began typing.
She thought, 'Let's see what kind of story you will bring.'

She kept typing for hours on end, exchanging papers with mechanic accuracy, not noticing how the time passed and only when her stomach growled in protest she stopped and stared at the pile of pages she had produced in awe.

She put her hand on the pile, whispering, "The last time I was able to write like this was right after meeting you..." before looking up to the picture of her late husband, who had died in a freak accident last year.

After fixing herself something to eat, she sat back down and as she wrote, the world around her went dark and she fell asleep.

When she woke again, she was no longer in her study, but instead standing on a spacious meadow near the town of Star House.
The sun was shining down and her summer dress fluttered in the wind, as her beloved walked up to her speaking words which got lost in the wind.
"I miss you!" she shouted to the vision of the man she loved, who merely smiled at her, just like he always did when she was sad.
'A smile that could melt rocks' she would always say, but this time his smile harbored a coldness she had never known and she shied away.

The world around her went dark again and the man she loved so dearly simply stepped into the darkness, disappearing from sight, ignoring her desperate cries for him to stay.
She fell to her knees on the unseen ground, tears streaming down her face, when a faintly familiar voice asked, "You've recently suffered a great loss...have you not?"
She startled to her feet and hurled around, expecting to see the man in the robe standing there, but there was nobody in sight and a cold wind picked up, making her cross her arms in order to keep herself warm.

"Who are you?!"
But she got nothing but silence. She called out a few more times, but never got a response, as the darkness seemed to embrace her even more with every passing moment until it engulfed her entire body and drowned her cries.

She shot up, every bone in her body aching, her wrists hurting the most.
She held her head, muttering, "I must've fallen asleep..." while getting up to wash herself, when her eyes came to rest on the pile of paper from the day before and her breath stopped momentarily.

Where only a small pile of maybe 20 pages had laid when she had taken a break before, it was now multiple hundreds, all typed neatly and in an orderly fashion.
As she scanned over the pages she recognized her writing style, the little twists and turns she liked to use and even the typos she would make over and over again.
Without a doubt she wrote this, however she had no recollection whatsoever about writing it.

Amazed she scanned over the written pages, taking in the story unfolding before her eyes with bated breath and before she knew it she had read the first hundred pages without taking a single break and if not for the aggressive knocks on her door she likely would have read another hundred.

She put down the paper and went for the door, where a frantic woman with short auburn hair in business clothes was standing, her hand raised to knock again.
"Where in Terra's name have you been, Celeste?!"
"...home? I...have been writing...I think."
"What do you mean 'you think'?! You disappear for days and all I'm getting is a 'you think'?! Do you have any idea how worried I was?!"
"...days?" Celeste asks, staring towards the sun, which stood high in the sky.
"Yeah, days! Three days to be exact! After the reading you just up and disappeared and nobody ever saw you again! The whole city has been looking for you!"
"I'm fine...really," Celeste replied, still trying to sort out her thoughts.
"Oh no, you're not and even if you think you're fine now, you're not going to be once I'm done with you. Come, we need to let people know that you are still alive!"

The business woman grabbed Celeste's arm and dragged her out of the doorstep and before she even knew what was happening, she was giving press conferences about her mysterious disappearance all over the place. She avoided mentioning the new book she wrote as well as the stranger, she met that night.

As night fell, Celeste let out a long sigh and asked, "Are we done now?"
"Depends...are you sorry yet?"
"Yeah...yeah, I am sorry," Celeste muttered and added under her breath, "Sorry for getting myself a manager like you."
"What was that?!"
"...nothing. Listen, I'm...really tired. Can I go home now?"
"...yeah. But don't disappear again, got it?"
Celeste waved off and headed towards her house.

Once there, she locked the door behind her, however as she walked in, she heard a faint noise coming from her study. It sounded like paper was being shuffled.
She grabbed a nearby walking stick hanging from the wardrobe and sneaked over to the source of the noise.

When she looked inside, her jaw dropped as she recognized the man from three days ago, leisurely sitting in her husband's armchair, flipping through the pages of the book she had written in a daze.
Upon noticing her, he smiled warmly, "Ah, you're back. About time."
"What the...how the...get the hell out of here!"
The man got up, his robe brushing over the ground silently and as he moved, Celeste felt the strength leaving her body.

He stood before her and said with a serious expression on his face, "I have come bearing a message."
"And what would that be?!" Celeste snapped.
"Meet me at the eternal sparkle at midnight. That's all."
"...who is the message from?"
"I'm afraid you'll have to come, if you wish to know. Now, if you'll excuse me."

While passing, the man's robe brushed Celeste's arm and immediately she was back on the meadow near Star House, her husband calling out to her. She felt content and safe as if none of her worries even existed.

After snapping out of it, she turned around, but the man was gone without a trace, except for an old key with a small paper attached, which sparkled in the lamplight.

She grabbed a jacket and sneaked into the tower through an unguarded back door using the key like the paper had instructed her and climbed the stairs.

When the clocktower beneath her struck midnight she cursed herself for being so stupid, however just as she was about to leave, a familiar voice called out to her, "Don't go...please..."

She recognized the voice and tears welled up in her eyes.
"That...that's impossible..." Celeste stuttered as she turned around to her husband.
He smiled and all of her worries and doubts melted in his smile as he said, "No...for those blessed by Gaia, nothing is impossible. I'm glad you got my message."
"But...but how...?"
He put a finger on Celeste's lips and then sealed them with a soft kiss before asking, "Does it really matter?" to which Celeste only shook her head and hugged the shiny form in front of her.

They sat down and talked until the clocktower rang 'one' and her husband grimaced, "I have to leave again."
"What?! No! Please, don't leave me again...!" Celeste pleaded, but her husband merely smiled, "Although my body is no more, I never have nor will I ever stop loving you. I wanted you to know that. Wherever the light reaches, I will be with you. And each day, upon midnight, you can find me here."

Then he faded back into the light he had come from, leaving nothing but a trace of sadness behind, but also an overwhelming happiness Celeste could not put into words.

When Celeste presented her new book, she dedicated it to all the lovers in the world.
And she named it: A love beyond death.